Ya know, at one point we had almost as many Mythos threads as we do now Age of Conan threads.

Blue's mentioned this new interview with Max Schaefer on Mytho's current status. Apparently it's moving into a truly open beta probably in a month or so. The plan is still for something of a Dungeon Runners model (free to download and play, microtransactions for better stuff and other benefits, etc.), and so there technically is no publisher in N. America (so there's no pressure to rush the release as with Hellgate, fwiw).

Last, but not least, here’s a question that’s on EVERYONE’s mind: can you clue us in on when Open Beta will begin?

Not for at least a month. We’re doing some extra work on billing security and customer support tools and things like that, and we really want to get it right for our eventual launch, so we’ve pushed our OBT date out just a bit. This only means the game will be better when we start, however.

The beta didn't tickle my ElmoTM, so I didn't play it much, but I'm still keeping an eye out and might re-visit it when it goes into open beta mode.

I really enjoy Mythos but wish there was something difficulty wise between normal and elite. Elite is just brutal unless you go with one of a few very specific builds, but normal there are many build where it becomes way too easy.

So I was reading some posts on QT3 about Mythos, and saw that they are going to work on bringing players together by eliminating the elite/normal selection on character creation and possibly do something like AoC where you select the difficulty when entering a zone/dungeon.

I've been playing a little just about every night for the past 10 days or so. I love the way the crafting mechanic is implemented. The risk/reward system just blows away the "make 100 boots to level up" model. Of course the big complaint is that for the most part, crafting skill points are tied to adventure level, but that's another topic I guess.

I find Mythos to be really fun in short doses.

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LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

Just tried out the Test Center version last night. The change to the new Overworld is very very cool. Stonehill felt so much different. The core of the gameplay is essentially the same, but this big sweeping change is awesome and gives the game a very different, unique feel - something close to Diablo 2 as a simplified MMORPG.

I hope the D3 developers are watching because the competition just got stiffer.

We regretfully announce that on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:59 PST the world of Uld known as Mythos will be going on hiatus. On behalf of all of the Devs and Community team we want to say thank you to everyone for their support and assistance with Mythos Alpha and Beta testing and we will see you soon.

At the end, I had a bad feeling about the game when they suddenly decided to insert a third-person, "more typical MMORPG" style camera view into the game, along with other MMO conventions. Why? Because it probably reflected Flagship's schizophrenic approach to Hellgate with its turret sequences, bizarro semi-isometric RTS sequences, and other attempts to be all things to all gamers. Flagship would call it "responding to gamer feedback," but if you have so little confidence in your game design that you're turning it upside down in the beta crib constantly, then you probably don't have much faith in your game to begin with (see the massive opening day Hellgate patch that tried desperately to improve the game by pretty much turning it upside down).

The "good" thing about the game getting terminated before it ever got a release, is Mythos now can become better in legend than it probably ever could've as a released game. And Travis Baldtree will become this mythical game dev figure that got messsed up when he attached his sail to Flagship...

Think about what Hellgate's rep could be if Flagship had canceled it the way Blizzard canceled Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft Adventures. You could have entire Web sites devoted to the legend of "what Hellgate could've been if only Flagship had completed it." Instead of Flagship-Hater sites like Flagshipped.

And then bitter former Hellgate players like me would not sit around in threads like this formenting cynicism and disappointment.

While I understand that complaint, the actual gameplay of Mythos wasn't altered by providing different camera views. And I really dug the new overworld design with instanced randomly generated "dungeons" throughout the gameworld. Made it feel more like a world to explore, something I wanted more of in Diablo 2 anyway. I definitely preferred it to the too-random and too-generic feel of the overworld areas of Mythos's original design.

I really hope Travis gets to take Mythos back and develop it independently. It was an incredibly promising game that was getting really awesome.

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While I understand that complaint, the actual gameplay of Mythos wasn't altered by providing different camera views. And I really dug the new overworld design with instanced randomly generated "dungeons" throughout the gameworld. Made it feel more like a world to explore, something I wanted more of in Diablo 2 anyway. I definitely preferred it to the too-random and too-generic feel of the overworld areas of Mythos's original design.

I really hope Travis gets to take Mythos back and develop it independently. It was an incredibly promising game that was getting really awesome.

Completely agree with everything Fars said here. The change in the overworld wasn't as schizo as some of the Hellgate decisions. It was a big, bold move trying to address what felt like a major concern to a lot of the community: that the game (like Hellgate in many ways) lacked a distinct sense of community due to the heavy heavy instancing. The overworld created a way for you to see other people a lot more of the time and really seemed to have an impact on the social structure of the game.

Seattle, Washington - August 8th, 2008 - The former Flagship Studios Seattle team is proud to announce their reformation as Runic Games (www.runicgames.com). As the team responsible for the highly-anticipated Mythos at Flagship Studios, Runic Games intends to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market.

The studio is headed by Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer. Travis served as Project Director for Mythos at Flagship Seattle, and previously created the bestselling Action-RPG FATE. Max was the Executive Producer for Mythos, and one of the original founders of Blizzard North, the creators of the bestselling Diablo franchise. He was also one of the founding members of Flagship Studios.

Announcements about Runic Games' forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days.

Seattle, Washington - August 8th, 2008 - The former Flagship Studios Seattle team is proud to announce their reformation as Runic Games (www.runicgames.com). As the team responsible for the highly-anticipated Mythos at Flagship Studios, Runic Games intends to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market.

The studio is headed by Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer. Travis served as Project Director for Mythos at Flagship Seattle, and previously created the bestselling Action-RPG FATE. Max was the Executive Producer for Mythos, and one of the original founders of Blizzard North, the creators of the bestselling Diablo franchise. He was also one of the founding members of Flagship Studios.

Announcements about Runic Games' forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days.

the way that announcement reads it sounds like they won't be doing Mythos, but making a totally new game.

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Maybe they just need to finalize details about getting the IP from Flagship or Namco or whoever it is that owns it? We can hope! Not that the Mythos IP is that involved, but would still be cool to retain the game name and all the work they put into it.

"At present, we're proceeding under the assumption that continuing with Mythos won't be possible for us," Baldree replies when asked about the possibility of working with the game again. "There are some enormous obstacles to making that a reality."

He continues, "The future of the IP and technology are in question, and in cases like this, as engineers drift away it becomes increasingly difficult to make use of what's come before.

"We're fortunate enough to have our entire Mythos team on board for Runic--but the good folks from Ping0 who were responsible for the network back-end have begun to find employment elsewhere, so that door really does seem to be closing."

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GameCyte: That’s such a shame. I know you’ve been intentionally coy about this subject so far, but as far as the Mythos intellectual property is concerned, it sounds like that’s not going to happen for you…

TB: We’re proceeding under the assumption that we’re not going to be able to get that or proceed on it. I think that door is just about closed. Because of the nature of how the IP is being held, and the technology being held separately, it seems safer and better for us to proceed as if we’re really not going to have any avenue to work with it, and it’ll be the best thing for our team to get moving on something we know we can do, and that doesn’t have those sorts of entanglements and history.

It's pretty clear again they'll have to just start from scratch. Which sucks really, because (imho) if Flagship hadn't had to take forever developing Hellgate's tech from scratch maybe they would've had time to work on the game itself. But, hopefully, they learned something from the HG/Mythos combo mess.

I hope for their sake they just think small and modest, and find a publishing situation where they can take their time, polish and not become Flagship 2.0.

Question 2 - What (mistakes) have you learned from Mythos?(Sol Invictus – Hellforge)

Since Mythos was originally envisioned as a very small and simple game, it didn’t have a lot of preproduction planning. As a result, a lot of stuff ended up getting jammed into it that didn’t fit very well, and the art style was a bit unoriginal. This time around we’re doing a lot more planning, and the artists have had the time they need to actually come up with a style, and the visuals will have a lot more personality as a result.

Also, when making randomized dungeons, it’s important to strike a balance between enough randomness to make every experience fresh, and enough intentionally staged set pieces to make the dungeons real and meaningful. I think in Mythos we went a bit too far towards the random end of the spectrum, and as a result all the dungeons felt really similar.

They haven't to this point announced what their new game will be (and whether it'll be a fee MMO or more of a Diablo type thing). Maybe we can start a new thread, when they do.

If Travis is in charge and has most (if not all) of his crew, I expect that I'll love whatever they come up with. Fate is a fantastic and fun game, and Mythos was even stronger in many respects. Their new project should continue the trend with the lessons they've learned each time.

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